The Intifada Youth Coalition has declared May 15, which marks the 68th Nakba anniversary, a day of anger against the Israeli occupation and called upon the Palestinian young people to clash with its troops in all flashpoint areas.

"Let May 15 be a day of marching and returning to our villages and areas and a day of confrontation between the Palestinian youths and the occupation in all flashpoint areas," a spokesman for the coalition told a news conference on Saturday in Gaza.

The spokesman stressed the need for making the Nakba anniversary an occasion to renew the faith in the Palestinian rights.

"The right of return is an inalienable individual and collective right, and it is sacred to our people and no one is entitled to waive or compromise it under any circumstances," he underscored.

The coalition also announced that all UN institutions would be closed on Monday in Gaza as a message of protest against the international silence on the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people under occupation, and called for participating in protests to be staged outside its headquarters.

Head of Hamas’s political bureau Khaled Mishaal called Saturday for adopting a national strategy based on Palestinian constants, mainly the adherence to land, national unity, and resistance option.

Mishaal's statements came in a video-taped speech to the Palestinian Conference to maintain National Constants held in Gaza on Saturday marking the 68th anniversary of Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe).

He stressed that resistance option is a natural, national, and religious right and the strategic route for the liberation of Palestine. He also stressed the importance of the Palestinian people’s adherence to their land and unity despite the Israeli massacres and wars.

“Israeli occupation has no legitimacy on our land regardless of the lapse of time,” he added. There is no separate state in Gaza Strip or in the West Bank, the Hamas leader said, and called for ending the internal division and holding general elections as soon as possible.

The challenges faced by the Palestinian cause need more support to the Jerusalem Intifada and resistance option, Mishaal underlined, stressing that his Movement will never recognize the Israeli occupation.

Palestine is a holy and blessed land that has historical and cultural roots, he said. On the other hand, Mishaal renewed his Movement’s vision towards the general Palestinian situation which is based on national unity and ending internal division. He also stressed the importance of reforming the state institutions on democratic basis.

“We are all partners in responsibly.” The Head of Hamas’s political bureau called on all Palestinian factions and national forces to work together according to a united strategy based on the Palestinian people’s national constants and legitimate rights.

Senior Hamas official Shaker Amara, from Jericho, has said that the 68th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) is a good chance to renew the vow to continue resisting the occupation until its removal from the Palestinian land.

In press remarks on Friday, Amara stated that "al-Quds intifada (uprising), which is being fueled by the Palestinian youth, reflects that the Palestinian people are insistent on extracting their usurped rights by force and not by another way."

"The presence of young people as a key element in the intifada confirms that this generation has not forgotten their cause, which the occupation has been trying to make them forget over 68 years."

Hundreds of Palestinians on Friday rallied outside the British embassy in the Lebanese capital Beirut to demand Britain to assume responsibility for the Nakba (catastrophe) it had caused to the Palestinians.

Representatives of Palestinian factions, popular committees and social groups as well as school students participated in the sit-in outside the embassy, where they carried banners holding Britain responsible for the Nakba and the massacres that had been committed against the Palestinians by Zionist gangs.

Secretary-general of the popular committee Abu Iyad Shaalan said that the UNRWA crisis management group would give British ambassador to Lebanon Hugo Shorter a letter urging his country to work hard on serving the interests of the Palestinian refugees.

Shaalan held Britain responsible for the displacement and humiliation of the Palestinian people, demanding it to provide every support for the UNRWA to help it fulfill its obligations.

He also called on Britain to pressure the UNRWA to stop its service cuts and improve the medical and educational services it provides for the Palestinian refugees.

Medical sources reported Friday that Israeli soldiers shot and injured three Palestinian with live fire, during a protest march east of the al-Boreij refugee camp, in central Gaza.

The sources said the soldiers shot three Palestinians with live fire. The three were moved to the Al-Aqsa Hospital, suffering moderate wounds.

The soldiers also fired dozens of gas bombs, causing scores of residents to suffer from severe effects of tear gas inhalation.

The Palestinians were holding a protest march in their land, located near the border fence, east of the al-Boreij refugee camp, when the soldiers started firing at them, leading to clashes.

The march was meant to commemorate the Naqba, in 1948, in which 750.000 Palestinians were displaced for the creation of the state of Israel on their land. Many of those displaced became refugees in Gaza, where they and their descendants remain today.

After the soldiers began firing at the marchers, local youth hurled stones at the soldiers, across the border fence, while the army fired live rounds, rubber-coated steel bullets, gas bombs and concussion grenades.

Israeli soldiers attacked on Friday dozens of Palestinians and international peace activists during the weekly protest in Kafr Qaddoum town, near the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia, and used jeep-mounted launchers to fired dozens of gas bombs, in addition to firing live rounds and rubber-coated steel bullets and sponge-tipped bullets; two Palestinians were shot, and dozens of protesters suffered the effects of tear gas inhalation.

Medical sources said a young Palestinian man, 26, was shot with a sponge-tipped bullet in the head, while another, 18, was shot with a live round in the leg, before medics moved them to the Rafidia government hospital, near Nablus.

Media coordinator of the Popular committee in Kafr Qaddoum Morad Eshteiwy said that the instant the protest began, the soldiers resorted to

the excessive use of force, firing hundreds of gas bombs, including long-range ones, hitting many homes, including the homes of Abdullah Jom’a and Abdullah Ali, causing their families, including children, to suffer severe effects of tear gas inhalation.

Today’s protest marks the sixty-eighth Palestinian Nakba, when Israel was established in the historic land of Palestine, after destroying hundreds of villages and towns, committing massacres of Palestinian civilians, and displacing more than 750.000 Palestinians in 1948.

Israeli soldiers attacked, Friday, the weekly nonviolent protest against the Annexation Wall and colonies, in Bil’in village west of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, kidnapped a senior nonviolent Palestinian activist and an Israeli activist, and injured dozens. This week’s protest marks the 68th anniversary of the Nakba, and including a cycling race.

The Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Bil’in said the soldiers assaulted its coordinator Abdullah Abu Rahma, causing various cuts and bruises, and kidnapped him, in addition to kidnapping an Israeli solidarity activist, also after attacking her.

The Committee added that the soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets, long-range gas bombs, and concussion grenades at the protesters, just as they approached the old site

of the Annexation Wall, and chased them in the olive orchards.

Resident Bassem Yassin, member of Bil’in’s village council was shot with a gas bomb in his arm, while dozens of local residents and Israeli and international peace activists suffered the effects of tear gas inhalation.

The Israeli gas bombs and concussion grenades also caused fires in olive orchards, and damage near the homes of Mahmoud Abdul-Hadi Samara and Mohammad Hashem Bornat, west of the village.

It is worth mentioning that Dr. Ahmad al-Majdalani, member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Dr. Ramzi Abu Rabah, member of the Political Bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Essam Bakr, coordinator of the National and Islamic Committee, and various other political and social figures participated in the protest.

The protesters carried Palestinian flags, and signs affirming the legitimate Palestinian Right of Return, liberation and independence, and chanted for the release of all detainees, and the removal of the Israeli settlers and their illegal colonies.

Today’s protest marks the sixty-eighth anniversary of the Nakba, when Israel was established in the historic land of Palestine through the forcible removal hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, massacres, and the complete destruction of hundreds of villagers and towns.

A few hours prior to the protest, the villagers and activists held a cycling race starting from Yasser Arafat Junction, in the center of Bil’in, heading towards the Annexation Wall, and when the villagers and activists gathered in the Palestinian land near the Wall, the army started firing gas bombs, concussion grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets.

The soldiers also invaded the Palestinian lands and assaulted many people, causing cuts and bruises. The Popular Committee said more than 100 people participated in the cycling race, including protest leader Abdullah Abu Rahma, who was kidnapped by the army.

It is worth mentioning that, despite the Israeli military assaults, the cyclers continued their friendly race.

Dr. a-Majdalani, and the head of the Popular Committee against the Wall, Engineer Waleed Assaf, and various committee members delivered the prizes to the winners; Mohammad al-‘Askari from Tulkarem, won the first place, while Wajdi ar-Ra’ey and Dia Shabaro, both from Nablus, came in the second and third places.

Israeli Occupation forces (IOF) on Thursday barred Palestinian marchers, who kicked off last Saturday from Haifa city in 1948 Occupied Palestine towards Occupied Jerusalem, from accessing the Aqsa Mosque.

The march’s spokesman Sindbad Taha told Quds Press that the IOF stopped the march in Wadi al-Joz district east of Occupied Jerusalem and barred participants from approaching the Aqsa neither collectively nor individually and threatened them with arrest.

Israeli police stopped the marchers on Wednesday at an Israeli barrier and forced them to use buses just to disrupt the march which is launched for the second year on the anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba in 1948.

Islamic Christian Commission (ICC) in support of Jerusalem and holy sites said the continuation of Israeli occupation is a daily Nakba for the Palestinians as well as the entire world.

It affirmed the Palestinians’ adherence to their constants; most important, the return of refugees and establishing the State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.

The ICC’s Secretary General Hanna Issa pointed out that Israeli apartheid practiced against Palestinians in 1948 was one of the largest apartheid campaigns in contemporary history.

In a statement marking the Nakba’s 68th anniversary, the ICC listed Israeli daily violations against Palestinians especially the Jerusalemites and against Muslims’ and Christians' sacred places in addition to the process of the Judaization of Islamic and Christian landmarks of Occupied Jerusalem.

The commission also mentioned the Israeli ceaseless closure of Palestinian cities and dividing them by the Separation Wall in addition to the confiscation of Palestinians’ lands, the settlement and the arrest of thousands of Palestinians.

The ICC's statement called on the world to back up the Palestinian people.

Head of the high follow-up committee for Arab citizens Ali Baraka has said that the only way to redress the effects of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 is to enable the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands.

In a festival held to launch "the march of return" in the Negev on Thursday, Baraka stated that this march would be organized every year until the day when the Palestinian state was established and the refugees returned to their homes.

"There are people in the Zionist Movement who say that if the right of return was achieved, there would be a demographic imbalance in the sense that the Jewish majority would be at risk, but we have to ask, 'How has this Jewish majority happened?

Is it not through the ethnic cleansing and displacement of the majority of our Palestinian people from their homeland," he underlined.

"The Palestinians have left their homes as a result of the massacres that were committed by the Zionist gangs and not as they claim that the Palestinians left those homes willingly and that they did not displace or kill them.

What happened was widespread ethnic cleansing," he added. "The leaders of the Zionist Movement wagered on abolishing this right by prescription, but they are wrong because the Palestinian does not forget his right," Baraka said.

The Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) imposed a hermetic closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip on the occasion of Israel’s celebration of its establishment in what the Palestinians call Nakba (catastrophe).

The closure, from Tuesday night till dawn Friday, coincides with Israel’s 68th establishment anniversary on the land of Palestine and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the process.

The Israeli TV 2 Channel said that all West Bank crossings will be closed in that period along with the Karm Abu Salem and Erez crossings with Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in 1948 occupied Palestine, Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the diaspora commemorate the same occasion on May 15 under the name of Nakba to assert their right to their homeland and the right of refugees to return to their villages and cities from which they were driven out by force.

Jewish organizations Tuesday called for raising the Israeli flag over the Dome of the Rock at the Aqsa Mosque during the commemoration of the Palestine Nakba in 1948 which coincides on May 15.

The organizations concerned with what has been known as “calling for building Temple of Solomon” published posters on social media networking and electronic websites demonstrating a Jewish settler over the Dome of the Rock while raising the Israeli flag.

In a similar context, Hebrew Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper stated that Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miri Regev works on setting a new law that obligates all institutions funded by the Israeli government to raise the Israeli flag including sports stadiums, theaters, and public halls.

As the Palestinian people are about to mark the 68th anniversary of the Nakba Day (catastrophe), an Israeli statistical report has showed that the number of Jewish settlers living in the 1948 occupied lands increased to over six million people.

According to the Israeli central bureau of statistics, there are 6,377,000 Jewish settlers in the 1948 occupied lands, comprising 74.8 percent of the total population, as well as 1,771,000 Arabs and 374,000 minority groups.

By comparison, the nascent occupation state of Israel had a population of just 806,000 in 1948.

On May 15, the Palestinian people will be commemorating the Nakba Day of 1948, when they were savagely attacked, slaughtered and driven from their homes into refugee camps by Zionist terrorist groups.

This was the day when the Zionists established their deformed state on the skulls of their victims.

Refugees Affairs Department of Hamas Movement agreed on Thursday with Palestinian factions on coordinating efforts to commemorate the 68th Nakba anniversary within a joint event program.

The department said, in a statement, that the agreement came in the wake of a consultation meeting in the headquarters of Islamic Jihad Movement in Gaza City.

The agreement stipulates organizing events under the name of the coordination committee while mentioning the party's name that organizes each event.

Head of the Refugees Affairs Department of Hamas Movement Isam Odwan said during the meeting that the decision came to highlight the national unity in this event in particular and confirmed that the coordination committee will continuously hold talks on every national event in order to coordinate joint activities.

The event’s program will be announced in a press conference before the headquarters of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City on May, 08.

he National Project to Preserve the Palestinian Family—Howiya— and the Association of Delateh natives celebrated the Palestinian Village Day under the slogan: “Delateh: The nostalgia of a motherland for its children” in the Lebanese city of Sidon.

A documentary movie on the history of Delateh village was screened during the celebration. Delateh is a Palestinian village located six kilometers away from the northeast of Safad city.

Member of the International Campaign to Preserve the Palestinian Identity—Intimaa—which sponsored the celebration, Muhammad Sweid, said Delateh village is a representative of all Palestinian towns and villages. “Our love for Delateh is emblematic of our love for every single inch of the Palestinian soil,” said Sweid.

“Belonging and rootedness make part of a deep faith that dwells in our hearts and souls wherever we go,” he added.

For his part, member of the Association of Delateh Natives, Haj Abdullah Muhammad, reiterated Palestinians’ commitment to armed resistance as the only means to liberate the occupied Palestinian territories and restore Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their motherland.

Speaking on behalf of Delateh children, minors Husam al-Deen Muhammad and Nour al-Deen Muhammad said the Israeli saying that “elderly people will die and the younger generations will forget” is unsound as Delateh children will never forget their motherland and their right to return.

According to a PIC journalist, Palestinian refugees from different age categories attended the celebration and were actively engaged in the events commemorating the Palestinian Village Day.

The Higher Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens has urged the Palestinians in the 1948 occupied lands to actively participate in the "march of return" slated to take place on May 12 in the Negev to mark the Nakba (catastrophe) anniversary.

In a press release on Saturday, the committee said that the march would confirm the Palestinian people's deeply-rooted sense of belonging to their land and their right to liberate from the yoke of occupation and establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

The committee also called for participating in activities and events to be held soon in solidarity with Sheikh Ra'ed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement in the 1948 occupied lands.

Palestinian national and Islamic forces in Ramallah and al-Bireh called for massive participation in the oncoming events for the commemoration of the 68th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba which marks May 15 of every year.

The factions called for taking part in the event to be held in Ramallah next Tuesday in condemnation of the massacre against Palestinians in al-Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria and in support of the refugees in Lebanon.

The events, over the month of May for Nakba’s commemoration this year, will be announced during Ramallh’s event, the factions pointed out. They also called for large-scale participation in the central Nakba event in Ni'lin town on Saturday, May 14.

The factions stressed their adherence to national rights especially the right of return, self-determination, ending the Israeli occupation, and national independence in a sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital.

The Israeli army on Wednesday closed the investigation into the killing of a Palestinian teenager during Nakba Day protests in May of 2014, without filing an indictment against the soldiers responsible for shooting the youth to death.

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem) said that their staff was informed by Lieutenant Colonel Edoram Rigler that army Judge Advocate General, Brigadier General Sharon Afek “was unable to find evidence” that the Israeli military or police used live fire against the Palestinian protesters.

The incident in question took place on May 15 2015, while Palestinians

were marking the Nakba day, the day in 1948 in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes for the creation of the state of Israel on their land.

During the 2014 protest, Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinians, and injured several others, after the army attacked nonviolent protesters near the Ofer Israeli prison, west of Ramallah.

The investigation was into the death of Mohammad Abu Thaher, 20. The other Palestinian protester who was killed that day was Nadim Nuwwara, 17, from al-Mazra’a al-Gharbiyya village, northwest of Ramallah.

The judge, in his ruling, claimed that that the Abu Thaher family refused to allow an autopsy, and added that the army did use live fire during the demonstration, but claimed the rounds “were only used as warning shots to disperse the protesters.”

Responding to the military ruling, B’Tselem said that it exposes the absurd way the Israeli army handles such cases, and that it also shows a “problematic leniency in the use of live fire against the Palestinians.”

Abu Thaher’s death was not caught on video. But the other Palestinian killed that day, Nadim Nuwwara, had his death caught on tape, and former police officer Ben Deri was indicted for that crime.

Because there was no video of Abu Thaher’s killing – despite the fact that it was at around the same time and under the same circumstances as Nuwwara’s killing – the judge decided to go with the soldier’s account of events, even though that account contradicted the physical evidence.

In Nuwwara’s case, an autopsy was conducted by the Palestinian Institute for Forensic Medicine, in Abu Die, east of occupied Jerusalem, which showed that Nuwwara was shot with live fire.

The Jerusalem Post said the video footage in Abu Daher’s case, and the video footage of the death of Nuwwara, are the two factors that differentiate between the two cases.

B’Tselem said that the Israeli army does not indict soldiers who kill Palestinians if the incident was not captured on video.

It is worth mentioning that Lieutenant Colonel Rigler, who acted as a prosecutor in this case (but failed to prosecute anyone), is also the lead prosecutor in the case of the Israeli soldier who executed a subdued, seriously wounded, Palestinian last week in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Despite criticizing the judge’s decision, B’Tselem said that, due to issues unrelated to the evidence in the case, it did not expect to petition the High Court of Justice over the decision, and that it was unclear if anyone else would.

The Jerusalem Post added that the case against Deri started last October, but his lawyer managed to get the original judge disqualified for his relation to some of the witnesses of the prosecution.